Google focus on brands 'only a minor update'

Google's recent shift towards emphasising big brands in search results is not a significant update to its algorithm, according to engineer at the search engine Matt Cutts.

In a YouTube video, Mr Cutts explained that Google's recent changes came about because it wanted to focus on "trust, authority, reputation, PageRank [and] high quality" when returning search results to users.

He stressed that Google is not so much focusing on the biggest brands as attempting to determine the most trusted and highest quality web pages.

"It's not that we try to always return brands. We try to return whatever we think the best results are for users," Mr Cutts stated.

The video was released after Aaron Wall of SEO Book published a blog post detailing recent changes in search rankings for big brands when popular product terms were entered, including queries for airline tickets, auto insurance, boots and diets, among others.